The Israeli Foreign Ministry has issued a stinging rebuttal against The New York Times, asserting that the media outlet had published “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press”.
The ministry’s rebuke came after the paper ran an article by columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof on the “brutal sexual abuse” of Palestinian detainees at the hands of Israeli soldiers, interrogators, and prison guards.
Drawing on wrenching personal interviews with victims in the occupied West Bank, Kristof argued that there is a “pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence” against Palestinians, including children.
Kristof said that while there is no evidence that Israeli leaders directly “order rapes”, they have overseen a security apparatus where sexual violence has reportedly become a “standard operating procedure”.
Combining these firsthand accounts with data from the UN and human rights groups, Kristof alleged that these abuses are “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy”.
He concluded that, regardless of one’s political stance, the use of sexual violence as a “major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians” cannot be ignored.
UN experts late last month expressed “grave concern” that sexual violence has become a “central component” of the Israeli occupation and an instrument of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians.
The experts asserted that such acts are not incidental but “structural and systematic”.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has issued a stinging rebuttal against The New York Times, asserting that the media outlet had published “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press”.
The ministry’s rebuke came after the paper ran an article by columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof on the “brutal sexual abuse” of Palestinian detainees at the hands of Israeli soldiers, interrogators, and prison guards.
Drawing on wrenching personal interviews with victims in the occupied West Bank, Kristof argued that there is a “pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence” against Palestinians, including children.
Kristof said that while there is no evidence that Israeli leaders directly “order rapes”, they have overseen a security apparatus where sexual violence has reportedly become a “standard operating procedure”.
Combining these firsthand accounts with data from the UN and human rights groups, Kristof alleged that these abuses are “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy”.
He concluded that, regardless of one’s political stance, the use of sexual violence as a “major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians” cannot be ignored.
UN experts late last month expressed “grave concern” that sexual violence has become a “central component” of the Israeli occupation and an instrument of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians.
The experts asserted that such acts are not incidental but “structural and systematic”.